Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/467

Rh will be observed that, if "fowl" means only "bird," or at most flying vertebrate, then the first certain evidence of the latter, in the Jurassic epoch, is posterior to the first appearance of truly terrestrial Amphibia, and possibly of true reptiles, in the Carboniferous epoch (Middle Palæozoic) by a prodigious interval of time.

The water-population of vertebrated animals first appears in the Upper Silurian. Therefore, if we found ourselves on vertebrated animals and take "fowl" to mean birds only, or, at most, flying vertebrates, natural science says that the order of succession was water, land, and air population, and not—as Mr. Gladstone, founding himself on Genesis, says—water, air, land population. If a chronicler of Greece affirmed that the age of Alexander preceded that of Pericles and immediately succeeded that of the Trojan War, Mr. Gladstone would hardly say that this order is "understood to have been so affirmed by historical science that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact." Yet natural science "affirms" his "fourfold order" to exactly the same extent—neither more nor less.

Suppose, however, that "fowl" is to be taken to include flying insects. In that case, the first appearance of an air-population must be shifted back for long ages, recent discovery having shown that they occur in rocks of Silurian age. Hence, there might still have been hope for the fourfold order, were it not that the Fates unkindly deter-mined that scorpions—"creeping things that creep on the earth" par excellence—turned up in Silurian strata, nearly at the same time. So that, if the word in the original Hebrew translated "fowl" should really, after all, mean "cockroach"—and I have great faith in the elasticity of that tongue in the hands of biblical exegetes—the order primarily suggested by the existing evidence—

 2. Land and air population, 1. Water-population,

and Mr, Gladstone's order—

 3. Land-population, 2. Air-population, 1. Water-population,

can by no means be made to coincide. As a matter of fact, then, the statement so confidently put forward turns out to be devoid of foundation and in direct contradiction of the evidence at present at our disposal.